


Those That Exist

by OctoberSpirit



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Cecil is Mostly Human, Established Relationship, M/M, Omniscient Cecil, Phone Calls & Telephones, Voicemail, Weeping Angels - Freeform, doctor who creatures, post desert otherworld, wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-17
Updated: 2014-11-17
Packaged: 2018-02-25 18:16:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2631515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OctoberSpirit/pseuds/OctoberSpirit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A scientist is usually in some sort of danger. Whatever you do, don't blink.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Those That Exist

It takes Carlos a couple of tries.

He’s got his phone wedged in a pocket of his jeans, and there’s a heart-stopping moment when he almost drops it, but the bulk of the war is waged with his touchscreen. He fumbles just trying to unlock the damned thing, which bodes particularly ill for the rest of the process; Carlos is blanking on the exact location of all of his apps. For the first time in years, he misses his flip-phone. He’d rewrite his dissertation for thirty seconds with a tactile keypad—or, failing that, for a voice-command option. For some reason he’s yet to fully investigate, Siri refuses to function in Night Vale.

“Cecil,” he mutters, a plea, a distraction. “Cecil, Cecil, Cecil, come on…”

His left eye starts to water profusely. He tilts his head to drain saline down his cheek. 

Calling his boyfriend is a ten-minute process, and the minutes stretch out like flavorless taffy in a manner altogether unrelated to Night Vale. Carlos finds his mind running through options, which he’s already done about twelve times. There are no options. It’s this or nothing.

“Pick up your phone,” Carlos pleads, when he finally succeeds in making it ring.

It rings seven times, then pauses thoughtfully before trilling a further eight-and-a-half rings. Carlos curses under his breath, eyes streaming, fingers tapping.

_Hi, you’ve reached the voicemail of Cecil Palmer. I’m off doing some important journalistic work. Or maybe just petting Khoshekh. But either way, leave me a message!_

“Subatomic particles,” Carlos hisses, a touch of ill-repressed violence in his tone. The phone beeps against his ear. “Cecil,” he says, “I need your help. Or somebody’s help. Someone with eyes. I am, at present, in a significant amount of personal danger. I’m in Mission Grove Park, near our usual tree.” 

Carlos pauses, terse informational statements disrupted by the reminder of a personal connection. Something drops into his stomach, suffuses his limbs—something human, emotional—affectionate and afraid. “Hey, if something happens, just know that I love you. I mean, we’re no stranger to temporal anomalies, but… Well. Just. Be careful, okay? Watch out for the Angels. These aren’t the Erikas, and they definitely exist.” He sighs and nearly looks away, then jolts with bright electrical panic.

 _Focus, Carlos._ He breathes, deep and even, until his trembling is no longer audible. “I’ll talk to you later, one way or another. I have to go. I love you, Cecil.”

With another long breath, a clawing desire to hear Cecil’s steady voice, Carlos fumbles the end call button and drops his phone.

“Well, shit,” he mutters, eyes burning behind his glasses.

What the hell happened to the Sheriff’s Secret Police?

-

Cecil’s phone lights up in the middle of a story—the flamingos at the zoo again; what else is new?—and his fingers itch to flip the switch for the weather. It’s too early, but time is a relative concept, and Carlos’ name on the screen is such a tantalizing lure. Cecil has just inhaled to give the cue, in fact, when—

“Oh, _come on._ Spire help us; this is ridiculous.”

One of the flamingos has actually broken into the emergency bunker, nipping a startled zoo patron on the wrist. The man looks down, horrified, then starts to moan in a way that will only serve to rouse a panic. And flamingos, of course, can smell panic. They are perhaps more adept at scenting panic than sharks at scenting blood in the water. 

Ugh. _This_ is why the city needs tax dollars for _bunker repairs, Steve Carlsberg._

Cecil sighs and relates this turn of events, complete with bitingly specific commentary, casting a wistful glance toward his phone. It lights up again from its corner of the desk, the screen displaying a voicemail alert. Cecil drifts one hand in its direction, scanning the situation for a break; voicemails make him nervous these days. Maybe once the panic gets going…

Spurred on by terror and the threat of a quarantine, the zoo patrons adopt a mob mentality, bludgeoning open the emergency bunker’s standard double-emergency hatch. They begin to stream back out into the zoo, creating a wave of swelling chaos that is impossible to report with any accuracy. Cecil jumps on the chance a little early, but it’s not like Night Vale is unfamiliar with procedure in zoo-related incidents of this nature.

“And now, dear listeners, I take you all…to the weather.”

The phone is at his ear long before the first note hits the air.

-

Carlos almost, _almost_ looks down when his phone starts to buzz, somewhere in the vicinity of his left shoe. It’s a close enough call that his adrenaline spikes—again, Darwin’s finches, his bloodstream is saturated by now—and he has to take several deep, calming breaths before he can even begin to think it through. Slowly, cautiously, praying to any greater sentience in the universe, Carlos starts to bend his knees, sinking toward the grassy earth.

The phone stops buzzing just as his knees touch the ground, just long enough for Carlos, vision blurring, to consider shutting his eyes. But then it starts up again, and he breathes a short sound as he gropes through the grass, his fingers skimming the smooth surface of its screen. Swiping at random, Carlos presses the phone to his ear, bypassing _fervent hope_ entirely in favor of _reeking desperation._

“Cecil?” Carlos says, his voice pitched upward into strangeness. 

“Carlos, thank the heavens, don’t _scare_ me like that.”

Carlos fumbles, blindly turning the phone; he’s holding it upside-down. “Sorry,” he says, once it’s properly tucked against his ear. “Dropped the phone. Couldn’t find it. Cecil, I’m—”

“I know,” Cecil says, “I got your voicemail. Carlos, love of my life, what are they? What should I do to help?”

“They’re, I need…” Carlos pauses, attempting to wrangle his thoughts, letting the science part of him take over. Facts, observations. Eyes open, eyes burning, one thing at a time. “The statues that appeared this morning, all over the park. They aren’t, they’re not statues; they’re some sort of creature. As far as I can tell, they’re attracted to Night Vale’s temporal abnormalities. I need to run some tests, analyze the data, but it’s fascinating, it’s like they feed on _time.”_

Cecil’s voice, simultaneously gentle and urgent, nudges against his ear. “Carlos.”

“Right, um. I’ve been working, and it was fine, but they…Cecil, they move, they move when you’re not watching them, and they’re faster than anything I’ve ever—” Carlos breaks off, taking a breath, and cuts through his rambling before it gains momentum. “They’re fast. It was fine until the SSP started to disappear, and by the time I noticed, I was too far in. I’m backed up against a wall, but I can’t get out without taking my eyes off them, and that’s when they move, when you look away. I don’t know what happens when they catch you, Cecil. I know you disappear, but I don’t know where or how to fix it.” Carlos swallows. “And as scientifically fascinating as that potentially is… I really don’t want to leave you again.”

A sound drifts through the speaker, something dark and capably determined, draped in Cecil’s voice yet somehow unfamiliar. “ You’re not going anywhere. You’re in Mission Grove Park?”

“Back near the tree. But Cecil, don’t come out here alone. I’m serious, it’s dangerous; it’s not normal danger.”

“I’m not going anywhere either, dearest Carlos.” There’s a click in the background, a near-silent breath, and then Cecil’s voice turns radio-smooth, dipping into a lower register. “Welcome back, dear listeners.”

“Cecil, what the hell—are we _on the air?”_

“It seems we’ve had a change of plan! While the flamingo situation is far from over, I’m afraid we’re in need of a shift in perspective. My wonderful, brave, and brilliant Carlos has run into some trouble at Mission Grove Park. In the course of his tireless work to protect our little town from all that deliberately or accidentally threatens it, he has put himself at great personal risk, and—while it does, admittedly, interfere with my duties as a radio professional— _I absolutely refuse to lose him again._ I’m sure you all understand me, Night Vale.”

Carlos nearly flinches from the sound of Cecil’s voice; it’s too raw, too inundated with authority. It’s got this edge that veers toward the impossible, that makes Carlos question the boundaries of humanity. This is Cecil, the Voice of Night Vale, so separate from and yet so entwined with the man who watches YouTube on their couch in cat boxers and an oversized hoodie. 

“Carlos,” Cecil says, “this is very important. Do the creatures have to see somebody watching?”

“I’m,” Carlos starts, straining through recall, “I’m not sure, but…I don’t _think_ so. That is, they seem to have some method of knowing without the need to observe their observer.”

“How certain are you?”

“It’s a sound hypothesis.”

Cecil sighs through the phone—Carlos can practically see him steepling his fingers—and allows a second or two of dead air. “All right, Carlos. Very quickly: blink.”

Carlos’ eyes burn; he squints ever-so-slightly. “Cecil, I can’t; these things are _fast.”_

“Perhaps. But they are being watched.”

Carlos wavers for only a handful of seconds. His eyes are on fire, he’s down to his last reserves of endurance, and Cecil’s voice is level with certainty. And Carlos, as always, trusts Cecil with his life.

Carlos blinks.

His body tenses. 

He wrenches his eyelids open again.

When his vision, blurry and painful, reinstates, none of the creatures have come any closer. The nearest is still a couple yards off, its face pressed forward into its cupped palms. Emboldened, Carlos blinks more slowly, only to encounter identical results.

“Cecil,” he breathes from the brink of hysteria.

“Do you think you could come to the station now, Carlos?”

Carlos is already scaling the wall. He does not need to be asked twice.

-

Cecil disregards the flamingos. They were basically filler on a slow news day; it’s not like he’s dropping the story of the year. Instead, he narrates Carlos’ trek through town, eyes fixed on the space just beyond his microphone. One of the interns scuttles in nervously; Cecil disregards them as well.

It’s not been so long since the desert otherworld. Like hell is he going through that again.

Vaguely, at the back of his head, he registers the movements of the SSP, of the vague yet menacing government agency as its helicopters dip down out of the sky. A much bigger story is brewing in the park, but he’s not _quite_ obligated to get to it yet, not when they still might opt for a cover-up. For now, his personal and non-personal concerns converge on the scientist just down the street, with the grass-stained labcoat and bloodshot eyes. 

On imperfect Carlos and his perfect hair, and his perfect existence on this plane of reality.

Standing, risking management’s wrath, Cecil switches the feed to a pre-recorded segment, a report on the new community center and a corresponding rise in the slug population. Dropping his headphones onto the desk, he breezes out past one of the interns, then breezes past Intern Maureen, as well. She rolls her eyes but doesn’t say anything, apparently deeply absorbed in her editing.

When Carlos, bleary-eyed, stumbles into the station, Cecil is waiting to gather him up. They sink to the floor right there in the lobby, Cecil touching to establish corporeal presence, Carlos dropping his head against Cecil’s chest. 

“Carlos,” Cecil murmurs, the name like a prayer, his voice threaded through with whisper-thin fractures.

“I know,” Carlos says, “but later. Just, later.”

Cecil nods and holds Carlos more tightly against him, and Carlos finally closes his eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm scared as all hell of the weeping angels, so I keep crossing them over into other fandoms, for some reason. I don't even.
> 
> (There's a teeny-tiny Animorphs reference in there, too.)
> 
> You can find me at octoberspirit.tumblr.com if you want to wreck your sleep schedule with me.


End file.
